The Non-Profit Status Quo

I want to paint a picture of what I (and probably most of you) think of when you think of how a local non-profit organization operates.

There’s a small team of 5–15 people who work their butts off to put together a local tree planting event (or something to that affect). They post their event on their Facebook page to gauge how many people will be attending. On the day of the event, 40–50 truly passionate do-gooders attend the event. The organizers of the event get everyone situated with tools and equipment to plant trees.

After they’ve planted ~100 trees, the small team of organizers go around to all their volunteers with a piece of paper attached to a clip board to collect everyone’s emails, despite the fact that 75% of these passionate people are returning volunteers and the non-profit already has their emails in their database.

So, what’s wrong with this picture?

Scale

The main difference between a non-profit and a for-profit is self-investment. For-profit companies invest in technology, improving efficiency by investing in long term growth.

Non-profits are looked at as a middle-man for donations. Passionate people donate their hard earned time & money, expecting the non-profit to pass 100% of their money through to the cause they donated for. This leaves no room for non-profits to invest in themselves in order to scale and grow.

If you donate regularly to charity, there’s nothing wrong with wanting 100% of your hard earned money to go straight to the cause. So maybe it’s the business strategy thats at fault. The majority of for-profits don’t donate to charity and non-profits aren’t as affective as we want or need them to be. Is a hybrid of for-profit and non-profit the solution?

Rethinking The Way We Engage With The Products We Love

The average consumer genuinely wants to donate to charity if they have the financial means to do so, however, what is the percentage of the population that is financially secure enough to donate to charity on a regular basis? Whatever that percentage is, its not enough.

On top of it all, it seems somewhat ridiculous to expect the average citizen to continue to donate their own hard earned money to improve their community and the world around them. Everyone wants a safe, clean and just community. Everyone also wants the newest nike cross-trainers. So how does the average person get both without having to pay for both?

The answer to this question is incentive. Forever I wrestled with the question; How does a company leverage their product to incentivize a user to donate money to charity?

I had it backwards.

When you reverse it, you answer the question. Combine product engagement and charitable giving; the more the user engages with a companies product, the more the company will donate to charity on the users behalf. This way the customer gets to have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.

Its a provocative idea and the product must be tailored in such a way that makes the business strategy viable. It can be done and it can be financially successful. The millennial generation is beginning to demand this type of consumer incentive and the brands that accomplish this will create a loyal and profitable user base.